The Carvels may be demented but their interactions this week were eerily affecting – Jessica (not sterile, incidentally) was undone by her father’s love and moved by her brother’s attempt to protect her with that new identity (knowing it wasn’t for Arby poses the question of whether, like those sleeper agents, he was planning to to turn the gun on himself before his dad did the job for him?). Arby’s lost weight, his little sister noted approvingly. Philip loves Jessica, while Jessica and Arby had the closest two traumatised, psychotic killing machines can come to a normal conversation. When everyone had stopped pointing guns at everyone else for long enough to exchange words, we glimpsed some rare moments of parental love and sibling complicity between the Carvels. Those eldritch moors were the perfect backdrop to the Carvels’ disconnected get-together, a heightened landscape against which their uncanniness fitted right in. We’re used to feeling shocked and delighted by Utopia, but pathos? That’s a new development. Episode five’s dolefulness began with Becky asking if they were all killers now, continued with Ian’s grief over the murder of his brother, and ended with the Carvels’ chaotic family reunion. With so many pieces in play at this stage of the game, it made narrative sense to divide up the group until the last scene, even if the numerous pairings and trios made things feel more chaotic than usual.īefore the chaos though, there was emotion. In this episode though, the exhilarating ride we were enjoying has shuddered uncomfortably to a halt, leaving us all dangling over a sheer bloody drop.įraming the episode with stylised scenes of the man about to drop the Russian Flu bomb (Steven Robertson doing his best T-1000 impression) was an effective way to tidy up the edges of what was arguably this series’ most convoluted entry yet. Terrible things have happened, but in close enough proximity to colour, action and humour that we’ve been too entertained to feel wretched about them. Up until now, Utopia’s present-day episodes have bounced along on a kind of bright, psychotic buoyancy. This week’s instalment was a dark affair, no more violent than its predecessors, but much more tonally desolate. The comedy is very sophisticated and usually revolves around Tony or Nat's endless frustrations and "face-palms" - real or implied.Utopia’s world ends not with a whimper or a bang then, but with a burger chain employee handing in his hat… These storylines are set within a public-service type office filled with other characters who are either barely competent at their roles or easily distracted with all sorts of HR issues, WHS or professional development things going on in the background. The plot ines of each episode usually revolve around the two "doers" trying to actually get a project started and in motion set against the spin doctors quite narrow agendas of producing over-hyped media events and distracting "new ideas". It pits a pragmatist (Tony - Rob Sitch, head of the NBA) and a realist (Nat - Celia Pacquola) against self centred spin-doctors (Rhonda - Kitty Flanagan, media manager) and (Jim - Anthony Lehmann government liaison). In the tradition of The Hollowment, Utopia is set in the offices of the fictional "Nation-Building Authority" - a semi autonomous government authority charged with co-ordinating and facilitating infra-structure on behalf of the government.
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